973»7L63    Hertz,  Emanuel 

GH  Ulm  The  many-sided  Lincoln  -  what 

would  he  do  if  he  were  here  today? 


.N 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


presented  by 

c.  2  -   Emmanuel  Hertz 


The  Many-Sided  Lincoln 

What  Would  He  Do  Were  He 
Here  Today  ? 

EMANUEL     HERTZ 


AN   ADDRESS    DELIVERED    AT   WASHINGTON    HEIGHTS    CONGREGATION 

FEBRUARY  12,   1926 


An  edition  of  1000  copies  of  this  address  has  been 
printed  of  which  this  copy  is  No. 


'/L^.    '^- 


THE     MANY-SIDED     LINCOLN   —   WHAT 
WOULD  HE  DO  WERE  HE  HERE  TODAY? 

By  EMANUEL  HERTZ 

(An  address  delivered  in  honor  of  the  memory  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
at  the  Annual  Services  of  the  Forum  of  Washington  Heights 
Congregation    in    the    City    of    New    York    on    February    12,    1926.) 

|HE  whimsical  caricaturist  who  draws  an  array  of  studies  of 
possible  portraits  of  Abraham  Lincoln  by  Murillo,  Van  Dyke, 
Velasquez,  Michael  Angelo,  Raphael,  Hals,  Whistler,  Millet 
and  Rembrandt,  each  one  after  the  manner  of  his  age  and 
after  the  mode  then  prevalent  in  his  country — if  these  masters  had  indeed 
painted  Lincoln — has  but  exemplified  what  is  happening  to  the  great  War 
President  at  the  hands  of  novelist-historians,  and  biographer-poets.  They 
summon  up  before  our  gaze  an  Abraham  Lincoln  who  never  lived  and 
who,  had  he  read  some  of  these  effusions,  would  have  been  puzzled  as 
to  who  was  really  the  subject  of  these  biographical  phantasmagorias. 
On  the  theory  of  producing  something  new,  we  have  these  later-day 
biographers  rhapsodize  about  Lincoln's  extremely  prosaic  childhood  and 
reenact  an  Iliad  of  woe  through  which  he  forged  his  weary  way,  and 
this  array  of  authors  has  drawn  out  the  history  of  his  family  for  seven 
generations  with  a  meticulous  minuteness  rarely  lavished  upon  the  scion 
of  an  imperial  family — while  Lincoln  himself  spoke'  of  his  family's  life 
story  as  'The  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor."  But  the  spirit  of 
piling  Ossa  on  Pelion  will  not  down  and  by  sheer  force  of  volume  of 
research  Lincoln  is  forced  into  a  heraldic  Almanac  de  Gotha  of  his  own. 
But  this  wise  man  of  the  Civil  War  era  has  left  an  effective  antidote  to 
all  such  futile  effort — to  make  him  appear  other  than  he  really  was.  He 
wrote  and  he  spoke'  his  philosophy  of  life,  his  ideals  and  theory  of  gov- 
ernment, his  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  his  views  of  the  duty  of  the 
citizen  to  his  country,  and  the  relationships  of  man  to  man,  of  employer 
to  employee,  of  commander  to  common  soldier,  of  President  to  his 
Cabinet,  to  his  Congress,  to  his  War  Governors,  he  wrote  these  thoughts 
and  reflections  and  duties  and  rights  into  his  addresses,  into  his  messages 
and  into  his  lectures  and  into  his  letters.  Examine  an  index  to  his  col- 
lected works — to  those  which  have  appeared  in  print,  and  you  will  see 
lucid  expressions  of  opinion  on  a  multiplicity  of  subjects.  Read  the 
speech  or  the  letter  or  the  message  covering  any  particular  subject,  and 
you  will  find  a  gem — a  nugget  of  pure  gold  direct  from  the  heart  of 


ymati 


Abraham  Lincoln.  And  but  for  the  lamentable  lack  of  study  of  those 
precious  works,  we  have  seen  grow  up  in  the  minds  of  many,  a  cadaverous- 
looking  charcoal  sketch  of  the  great  American — with  one  or  two  fables  or 
events  tacked  on  to  the  caricature  of  what  was  as  noble  an  apparition 
when  seen  in  all  its  remarkable  manifestations  as  is  the  impression  made 
upon  our  minds  by  the  undimmed  splendors  of  the  rising  sun.  Close  upon 
those  romancers  who  persist  in  having  the  babbling  brook,  the  song  of 
the  birds,  the  whistling  of  the  wind,  the  glimmer  of  moonlight  on  the 
waves  of  the  rivulet  as  indispensable  parts  of  the  landscape  traversed  by 
the  youthful  Lincoln,  are  those  who  profess  to  find  that  he  has  excelled 
in  one,  and  in  only  one  field  of  endeavor.  These  now  profess  and  proceed 
to  demonstrate  that  this  or  that  particular  specialty  in  which  Lincoln 
excelled,  enabled  him  in  after  life  to  solve  the  problems  which  he  was 
called  upon  to  cope  with.  The  ignorance  and  arrogance  of  this  class  of 
biographers  and  romancers  has  actually  diverted  the  gaze  of  the  multi- 
tude from  the  real  character  of  Lincoln.  The  reverend  homage  paid  to 
the  printed  word  simply  because  it  is  printed,  simply  helps  along  these 
multitudes  of  inventions.  Every  season  brings  its  five- foot  bookshelf  of 
Lincoln  books  and  addresses,  and  they  all  look  distressingly  alike  in 
workmanship. 

Why  not,  in  justice  to  him  and  all  those  who  ought  to  know  him 
as  he  was,  go  back  to  the  source,  the  only  source  of  all  our  reliable  in- 
formation? Why  not  call  upon  all  who  know  or  have  a  letter  or  docu- 
ment which  would  shed  any  light  on  Lincoln,  to  produce  and  publish  it? 
Let  us  study  Abraham  Lincoln  as  he  was.  Let  us  hold  him  up  to  our 
children  in  his  real  habiliments  of  body  and  of  mind  ?  Let  us  start  with 
the  young  Lincoln  in  the  Illinois  Assembly;  let  us  follow  him  through 
five  years  of  legislative  life  at  his  desk  in  the  legislature — the  desk  which 
is  even  now  looking  for  a  permanent  resting  place.  Let  us  read  the 
letters,  the  speeches  and  the  Lyceum  addresses  of  that  period.  Let  us 
follow  him  as  he  studied  law  from  the  moment  he  found  a  copy  of 
Blackstone  at  the  bottom  of  the  old  barrel.  Let  us  follow  him  as  he 
practiced  law  for  many  years  and  come  to  know  Lincoln  the  lawyer. 
Oh,  what  a  wonderful  tale — truthful  to  the  letter,  can  be  told  about  this 
young  champion  of  deserving  causes — this  champion  of  the  widow  and 
guardian  angel  of  the  orphan — this  great  and  good  man  who  strove  for 
justice,  with  truth — truth,  the  seal  of  God — as  his  lodestone.  He  would 
right  a  wrong,  he  would  struggle  for  an  unfortunate  client — always 
provided  that  he  was  convinced  of  his  honesty  and  of  the  justice  of  his 
cause.  He  could  not  last  as  the  advocate  of  evil.  He  withdrew  and 
cleansed  himself  of  the  contact  with  evil.  He  became  the  jury  lawyer  of 
his  day  in  the  State  of  Illinois.  And  yet  no  man  ever  lived  who  would  have 
made  a  better  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
President  Taft — who  picked  and  appointed  more  Judges  than  any  other 


'President  save  only  Washington — is  authority  for  this  claim,  and  Senator 
Beveridge  in  his  immortal  life  of  the  great  Chief  Justice  pictures  Lincoln 
as  an  almost  indistinguishable  colleague  and  companion  of  one  for  the 
other.  But  all  of  this  does  not  demonstrate  that  Lincoln  was  a  great 
lawyer  only — a  lawyer  to  the  exclusion  of  all  else.  It  was  one  of  the 
many  occupations  thrust  upon  him  by  a  Divine  Providence,  preparing 
him  for  the  greater  tasks,  for  the  more  exacting  ordeals,  yet  to  come. 
We  find  another  student  of  the  great  Commoner  studying  Lincoln's 
political  activities  from  his  appearance  on  the  platform  during  his  first 
candidacy  for  office  down  to  his  re-election  for  the  Presidency  in  1864. 
He  will  examine  the  newspapers  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  a  score  of 
States  in  order  to  demonstrate  that  it  was  not  Lincoln  the  lawyer,  but 
Lincoln  the  political  leader  or  statesman  who  really  made  the  great  im- 
pression on  his  times. 

An  old  veteran  of  the  Civil  War  attempts  to  demonstrate  that  the 
great  joint  debate  was  really  the  climax  of  his  career  and  he  digests  the 
opinions  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  contemporary  journals  to  show 
that  his  thesis  is  the  only  one  that  fits  the  great  debater,  the  great  tribune 
of  the  common  people. 

There  are  others  who  were  slow  to  recognize  his  great  worth  and 
who  began  to  see  him  and  know  him  under  the  great  storm  and  stress  of 
the  Civil  War — in  that  beleagured  city — Washington.  His  dealings  with 
a  refractory  Congress,  his  troubles  with  Northern  States,  loyal,  but  slow 
in  respyonding  to  the  call  of  the  Union.  His  countering  the  assaults  of  the 
disloyal  in  his  own  ranks,  his  warding  off  blows  for  misguided  friends, 
his  course  of  education  of  an  entire  country — that  the  Union  must  be 
preserved — presented  an  entirely  new  theory  to  the  historian  of  the  Civil 
War.  He  discovered  a  figure  towering  over  and  above  all  others  around 
him — a  sublime  figure  under  every  phase  of  the  cataclysm — a  figure  heroic, 
sublime,  majestic,  holding  to  the  steering  wheel  of  the  Union  and  steering 
for  safety,  to  victory.  This  man  is  reaching  the  conclusion  Seward 
reached — "We  must  revise  our  opinion  of  this  man."  We  knew  him  not. 
We  have  a  great  War  President — uncanny  in  his  knowledge  and  ability 
to  cope  with  so  many  distracting  problems  at  the  same  time — there  is 
something  superhuman  about  it  all.  Stanton,  the  imperious,  is  subdued ; 
Seward,  the  all- wise  is  awed;  Wells,  the  faithful  is  beginning  to  see  a 
great  light.  Senators,  congressmen,  governors,  generals  unwilling  but 
inevitably,  are  drawn  by  the  giant  magnet  of  common  sense,  of  thorough- 
ness of  human  sympathy — all  are  drawn  on  for  help,  for  guidance,  for 
information,  for  re-heartening,  for  strength,  for  faith  in  the  ultimate 
victory  of  the  Union  under  its  great  pilot.  Hence  the  evolution  of 
Lincoln,  the  statesman,  the  great  War  President,  the  master  of  men. 
(What  a  misnomer  to  be  applied  to  that  humble  burden  bearer.) 


The  leaders  of  religion  are  now  turning  their  gaze  upon  the  lonely 
spokesman  of  the  Union — who  speaks  in  the  language  of  the  Prophets, 
who  seems  to  have  sprung  from  between  the  pages  of  the  Bible — for 
does  he  not  use  Bible  phrases,  parables,  nuggets  of  wisdom  like  the 
Lawgiver  of  old  ?  Did  he  not  see  the  Union  on  fire  but  not  destroyed — 
the  bush  burning  but  not  destroyed  by  the  fire?  Did  he  not  hear  the 
call  from  amid  the  flames  of  the  embers  which  made  up  the  toppling 
Union — "Go  and  save  the  Union?"  And  did  he  not  answer  joyfully, 
anxiously:  "Here  am  I?"  Preacher  and  teacher,  priest  and  religious 
leader  recognize  a  kinship  between  his  President  and  his  Prophets  and 
his  saints  and  his  martyrs,  those  who  made  up  the  list  of  those  who 
strove  to  make  man  free  and  independent  and  enlightened.  They  begin 
to  recognize  a  kinship  to  Abraham,  to  Moses,  to  Paul,  to  Savonarola 
(what  a  striking  likeness  of  emaciated  profile),  to  Wyclif,  to  Cromwell, 
to  Calvin,  to  William  the  Silent,  whose  taking  off  the  little  children 
bewailed  as  did  an  entire  grief -stricken  country  bewail  the  untimely  death 
of  his  modern  replica;  and  when  he  was  consigned  as  belonging  to  the 
ages — every  teacher  and  preacher  of  God's  Word  paid  his  share  in  a 
universal  requiem  rendered  to  the  martyred  hero  of  the  epic  called 
America. 

The  stylist  and  scholar,  the  student  of  language  who  is  freer  from 
charlatanism  than  most  people,  begins  to  study  the  text.  He  reads  Lincoln^s 
addresses,  his  messages  and  his  letters.  He  asks  himself  where  did  this 
man  derive  his  pure  English  style?  How  is  it  that  he  is  so  free  from  the 
baneful  style  of  political  speaker  and  writer?  How  brief,  how  simple, 
how  pure,  how  clear  his  thought  and  his  style  and  his  mode  of  expres- 
sion? He  now  tries  to  find  a  prototype  and  he  goes  far  back  to  ancient 
Greece  and  finds  in  Pericles  the  only  man  to  whose  oration  he  can  com- 
pare this  novel  style  and  Aesop,  the  only  one  whose  tales  resemble  Honest 
Abe's.  Few  spirits  have  spoken  thus — two  or  three  in  all  the  intervening 
ages.  This  man  is  a  great  exemplar  of  English  prose  style;  but  hold, 
some  of  it  reads  like  blank  verse.  What  a  wonderful  man  is  this  who 
in  the  short  space  of  time  mastered  the  English  language  within  which 
to  clothe  these  undying  ideas  and  ideals.  The  literary  critic  now  reads 
his  letters  and  begins  to  understand  why  the  newspapermen  of  his  day 
— and  there  were  giants  in  that  profession  in  those  days,  demanded  letters 
from  Lincoln  on  all  the  many  questions  and  problems  of  the  day— because 
all  read  them,  all  quoted  them.  He  hardly  opened  his  lips  but  he  said 
something  which  will  not  die.  Was  there  ever  such  another  letter- writer  ? 
Letters  in  which  sentiments  ran  the  gamut  of  all  the  emotions  of  a  bleed- 
ing, embattled  nation  struggling  through  the  darkness  to  light,  through 
rebellion  and  treason  to  victory  and  union.  The  Epistles  of  Lincoln — 
what  an  alluring  title  to  some  new  novelist-historian  of  a  great  national 
hero  and  martyr ! 

6 


And  now  come  the  mothers,  the  heartbroken  mothers,  the  grief- 
stricken  mothers,  the  tear-blinded  mothers,  the  pale,  emaciated,  half-crazed 
mothers,  they  came  to  Lincoln,  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  to  the  President — tired, 
sleepless,  exhausted,  red-lidded,  hollow  cheeked,  the  burden-bearer  of 
humanity,  literally  dropping  under  his  great  burden  and  faces  these 
mothers,  and  hears  their  heartbreaking  appeals  of  impending  executions 
of  their  boys — the  victims  of  army  discipline  through  the  ages — ^and 
Father  Abraham,  but  lately  bereft  of  his  own  child — ^melts  in  sympathy 
as  he  hears  these  heartbroken  mothers  of  the  Union  plead  for  their  off- 
spring, and  he  pardons  and  he  pardons  and  he  pardons  until  we  behold 
in  him  the  Angel  of  Mercy  at  the  throne  of  the  Most  High  pleading  for 
pardon  for  all.  He  pardons,  while  the  generals  threaten  to  resign,  while 
Stanton  growls  over  the  undermined  morale  of  the  army  and  over  shat- 
tered discipline.  "Stanton,  is  not  this  boy  of  more  use  to  the  Union  on 
earth  than  under  earth?" — and  so  we  behold  the  sublime  outline  of 
Lincoln,  the  Pardoner — eclipsing  that  of  the  lawyer,  of  the  politician, 
of  the  debater,  of  the  legislator,  of  the  statesman,  of  the  executive,  of 
the  stylist,  of  the  letterwriter,  and  for  a  moment  we  behold  in  juxtaposi- 
tion the  two  great  solemn  pictures — Lincoln  the  Comforter  of  the  mother 
of  the  pardoned  boy,  and  Napoleon  standing  rigid  over  the  sleeping 
sentinel  who  awakes  and  beholds  his  emperor  on  guard — and  his  irrevoca- 
ble doom  pictured  in  the  inexorable  features  of  his  emperor !  Choose  the 
picture  which  appeals  more  to  the  universal  human  heart. 

And  so,  step  by  step,  we  find  the  pardoner  of  the  young  soldier 
become  the  pardoner  of  the  entire  South — a  friend  of  Jefferson  Davis, 
and  of  Lee,  and  of  Stephens,  whenever  they  are  ready  to  utter  the  word — 
"Union'\  And  then  his  task  is  done — ^the  task  for  which  he  lingered  an 
entire  lifetime — the  task  for  which  he  prepared  in  the  country  store,  in 
the  post  office,  in  the  legislature,  in  the  surveyor's  office,  in  the  courts, 
on  the  hustings,  in  Congress,  in  the  debate  with  Douglas,  in  Cooper 
Union — the  task  of  grasping  the  wheel  of  the  Ship  of  State  surrounded 
by  rocks,  by  wreckers,  by  lightning — steering  clear  through  the  Scylla 
of  secession  and  the  Charybdis  of  disloyalty  in  the  North — this  task  done 
— completely  done,  and  he  was  no  more,  for  like  Enoch,  God  took  him. 
This  many-sided  messenger  of  God  sent  to  right  the  wrongs  of  a  race — 
held  in  subjugation,  in  defiance  of  all  that  was  right  and  of  all  that 
was  just — indefiance  of  a  higher  law  that  was  becoming  dominant  in 
the  land,  although  it  required  a  repetition  of  the  ancient  plague — that  all 
the  first-born  of  the  oppressors  would  have  to  be  slain  before  the  children 
of  bondage  would  be  let  go. 

Let  us  all  repair  to  the  great  quarry,  his  recorded  words,  his  preach- 
ments, his  maxims,  and  let  us  complete  the  great  structure,  let  us  gather 
from  all  the  corners  of  the  globe  his  written  words  and  complete  the 

7 


task  so  well  begun.  Let  us  classify  all  he  said  and  all  he  preached — 
and  what  will  result?  We  will  erect  a  structure  to  which  all  the  people 
of  the  earth  can  come  for  guidance  and  inspiration.  Would  a  political 
leader  seek  light  and  leading  let  him  study  the  political  utterances  of  our 
many-sided  Lincoln.  Would  an  executive  not  merely  ask  himself  per- 
functorily, "What  would  Lincoln  do  today?"  let  him  read  and  have  his 
answer.  Would  you  have  patent  for  loyalty  and  patriotism  let  him  read 
Lincoln  who  declared  that  he  would  be  the  last  man  to  defy  the  enemies 
of  his  country  when  all  others  had  given  up.  Would  you  desire  to  find 
a  method  of  exposing  a  false  prophet  of  a  wicked  cause — study  his  joint 
debate  with  Douglas.  Would  you  know  how  to  immortahze  those  who 
gave  up  their  lives  that  the  Union  might  live,  go  with  me  to  Gettysburg — 
and  in  solemn  silence  meditate  what  he  there  spoke  for  eternity.  Would 
you  know  how  to  cleanse  the  Augean  stables  of  a  putrid  and  treasonable 
administration — see  what  he  did  when  he  displaced  the  infirm  and  petulant 
Buchanan,  on  the  point  of  surrendering  all  to  the  enemies  of  his  country. 
Would  you  learn  how  to  manage  an  administration  open  to  assault  from 
without  and  from  within  with  those  closest  to  you  trying  to  embroil  you 
in  universal  war — see  what  Lincoln  did  from  the  moment  he  came  to 
Washington  through  the  long  and  weary  years  of  the  nerve-wrecking  and 
heart-breaking  war. 

Lincoln,  the  Diplomat!  How  they  would  have  smiled  had  someone 
called  him  that  ten  years  earlier — divined  what  the  rascally  Napoleon 
was  doing  with  the  agents  of  the  Confederacy — Lincoln,  the  diplomat 
solved  and  disposed  of  the  Trent  Affair  and  confounded  the  conspiracy 
of  Gladstone,  Palmerston  and  Russell  to  recognize  the  Confederacy  by 
timing  the  issuing  of  his  Emancipation  Proclamation,  not  to  please 
Wendell  Phillips  or  Beecher  or  Greeley,  but  in  time  to  prevent  action 
by  an  English  Cabinet  called  for  the  purpose  of  recognizing  the  Con- 
federacy— he  made  it  clear  that  taking  such  action  would  place  Christian 
England  in  the  position  of  the  advocate  and  champion  of  the  whipping 
post,  of  the  auction  block  and  of  the  Moloch  of  slavery.  Diplomat, 
indeed,  was  Lincoln,  who  picked  Dayton  for  Paris  and  Sanford  at  Brus- 
sels, who  gathered  all  the  munitions  available  on  the  Continent  and 
Adams  for  England  in  time  to  tell  his  lordship  that  releasing  the  Alabama 
was  war!  And  on  the  117th  Anniversary  of  his  birth.  Sir  Frederick 
Maurice,  one  who  judged  the  military  events  of  the  Great  War  with 
knowledge  and  keen  discernment,  finds  a  great  military  authority  in 
our  great  War  President  who  learned  the  great  lesson  of  War  and  of 
warfare  in  an  amazingly  short  time  and  from  a  military  standpoint  he 
knew  more  and  understood  more  than  all  his  civil  and  military  advisors, 
one  who  followed  understanding^  every  great  battle  from  Chancellors- 
ville  and  Antietam  through  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg,  down  to  Appomat- 
tox.    Lincoln  knew  the  war  map  better  than  his  generals  and  had  his 

8 


advice  been  followed  on  a  number  of  occasions,  the  war  would  have  been 
shortened  by  years. 

But  in  no  capacity  does  he  appear  to  greater  advantage  than  he  does 
in  the  White  House — the  mecca  for  every  human  being,  either  singly  or 
in  droves,  seeking  advice,  having  a  request,  an  idea,  a  petition,  or  a 
message.  What  a  motley  number  they  were — foreign  ministers,  war 
correspondents,  governors.  Southern  sympathizers,  generals,  soldiers, 
preachers,  teachers,  journalists,  financiers,  the  entire  army  personnel, 
cabinet  officers,  senators,  political  leaders — all  came  early  and  often  to 
advise,  cajole,  petition,  harass  and  annoy  the  man  of  many  sorrows,  the 
man  of  many  pardons,  who  was  trying  in  spite  of  them  all,  to  do  the 
work  he  was  called  upon  to  perform.  All  of  these  came  and  saw  and 
heard  for  themselves  what  this  many-sided  man  said  and  did  and  accom- 
plished. A  great  many  of  these  have  in  one  form  or  another  recorded 
their  impressions  of  the  man,  recorded  their  recollections  of  how  he 
acquitted  himself  under  the  most  trying  ordeals  and  all  seem  to  agree 
that  this  was  no  ordinary  man.  This  man,  who  saw  all,  who  heard  all, 
who  endured  slander  and  abuse  such  as  has  never  been  levelled  against 
any  one  human  being — and  finally  convinced  even  those  of  their  iniquity 
— this  man  who  was  never  found  wanting,  who  was  never  unprepared — 
this  was  indeed  no  ordinary  man. 

And  we,  the  heirs  of  this  great  soul,  we  should  dedicate  ourselves 
to  the  task  of  rescuing  Abraham  Lincoln  from  the  hands  of  his  detractors. 
We,  the  citizens  of  the  land  he  died  to  preserve,  owe  it  to  his  memory  to 
gather  lovingly  all  the  shreds  and  all  the  words,  all  the  sayings  and  all 
the  precepts  that  fell  from  his  lips  wherever  recorded  and  preserved  and 
demand  in  the  name  of  justice,  in  the  name  of  fairness,  that  all  the 
documents,  letters,  legal  papers,  inscriptions,  passes,  comments  and 
speeches  in  existence  anywhere,  everywhere,  be  produced  for  publication 
to  the  end  that  we  niight  reproduce  the  dead  leader  to  our  people  in  all 
his  many-sided  endowments  with  all  the  multitude  of  kindnesses,  of 
virtues  he  displayed,  as  engraved  in  the  missives  which  came  from  his 
heart  to  every  other  wounded  heart,  to  every  sorrowing  mother,  to  every 
war-weary  patriot — who  asked  for  and  received  the  treasured  words  of 
consolation  written  in  that  beautiful  script  by  the  hand  that  was  guided 
by  the  great  immortal  soul  in  the  White  House. 

And  now  what  would  this  many-sided  Lincoln  have  done  with  the 
problems  of  the  day?  is  a  question  which  every  now  and  then  one  of  our 
Lincoln  Day  orators,  one  of  our  statesmen  in  responsible  positions  asks. 
An  answer  to  that  question  has  been  attempted  a  great  many  times  but 
very  few  answers  have  been  given  in  the  light  of  Lincoln's  performances. 
The  sad  and  distressing  phase  about  the  whole  thing  seems  to  be  that 


all  those  who  ask  the  question,  not  unlike  his  biographers,  studiously 
refrain  from  reading  Lincoln's  speeches  and  letters.  They  refrain  from 
studying  his  political  acts  and  performances.  In  the  light  of  these  we 
can  truthfully  state  that  Lincoln  certainly  would  not  divide  his  followers 
into  patricians  and  plebeians.  Lincoln  certainly  would  not  have  divided 
the  voters  of  this  country  into  a  fighting  organization  and  into  an  office- 
holding  organization.  The  man  who  would  fight  the  battles  of  the  Re- 
public; the  man  who  would  preach  Lincoln's  doctrine  would  not  be  dis- 
qualified by  his  preachment  from  carrying  out  Lincoln's  policies  in  office. 

A  political  leader  with  Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  man  to  be  consid- 
ered and  consulted — Read  the  letters  to  Thurlow  Weed,  to  Senator 
Cameron,  to  Lyman  Trumbull,  to  Hannibal  Hamlin  and  to  a  host  of 
others.  And  it  goes  without  saying  that  the  political  party  today  which 
practices  that  sane  and  practical  political  principle  of  Abraham  Lincoln's, 
of  having  the  preachers  of  political  policy  become  the  performers  in 
office,  that  party  succeeds  and  continues  to  succeed ;  but  the  party  which 
has  one  portion  do  the  work  of  electing  and  then  is  made  to  make  way 
for  people  unheard  of  until  after  election,  and  who  by  some  necromancy 
convince  or  bedevil  the  appointing  power  that  they,  and  not  the  workers, 
should  fill  the  offices;  the  party  which  practices  this  false  political  prin- 
ciple fails  at  succeeding  elections  and  continues  to  go  down  to  defeat 
until  it  ceases  to  be  a  factor ;  for  it  does  not  deserve  to  live. 

And  when  the  political  leader  nowadays  asks :  "What  would  Lincoln 
do  if  he  were  here  today?"  we  can  tell  him  that  Lincoln  would  do  just 
that — reward  the  deserving  political  worker  with  political  preferment  after 
he  had  participated  and  made  possible  the  victory  of  the  party. 

Different  panaceas  for  eliminating  corruption  in  high  places  received 
but  scant  consideration  from  that  direct  political  descendant  of  old  Samuel 
Adams  who  said:  ''Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty."  And  if 
Lincoln  could  busy  himself  with  politics  every  day  of  the  year  he  could 
see  no  reason  why  others  should  not  do  the  same  thing.  Lincoln  believed 
in  a  trained  political  party — lieutenants  who  would  not  only  appreciate 
the  principles  the  party  stood  for,  but  who  were  trained  and  prepared  to 
carry  out  those  party  principles  in  such  a  manner  as  would  result  in 
strengthening  the  Union.  Political  volunteers  to  him  were  as  good  and 
as  bad  as  volimteers  in  the  army  who  came  for  thirty  or  sixty  days  and 
whose  one  thought  during  their  period  of  volunteering  was  the  anxiety 
to  return  home.  It  was  only  after  the  army  was  drilled  and  trained  and 
made  permanent  that  victories  were  made  possible. 

And  if  Lincoln  were  here  today  he  would  preach  and  practice  that 
only  trained  political  leaders  are  worth  anything  in  our  body  politic  and 
that  the  volunteers  of  a  week  or  ten  days  before  election,  for  the  purpose 

10 


of  filling  the  office,  if  successful,  would  make  no  impression  upon  that 
master  politician  today  any  more  than  they  would  have  in  his  own  time. 

The  questioner  as  to  what  Lincoln  would  do  on  different  occasions 
might  well  be  answered  by  referring  him  to  what  Lincoln  said  and  did. 
His  tariff  policy  was  clear  and  made  clear  by  the  tersest  and  clearest 
statement — which  once  more  shows  the  cloudless  lucidity  of  his  mind. 
What  would  Lincoln  have  done  about  National  Defence  and  National 
participation  in  international  affairs?  The  answer  to  the  first  question 
when  tested  by  his  actual  words  and  deeds  can  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
he  organized  the  greatest  army  and  navy  any  country  ever  had  up  to  his 
day.  And  the  other  question,  which  so  many  have  attempted  to  answer 
for  him,  can  easily  be  answered  by  anyone  who  knows  what  a  firm  be- 
liever Lincoln  was  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  in  the  policies 
of  Washington  and  Jefferson  and  Marshall  as  to  the  duties  and  as  to 
the  functions  of  our  country  among  the  nations  of  the  world;  and  it  is 
little  less  than  sacrilege  for  anyone  to  say  that  Lincoln  would  have 
advocated  entry  of  our  country  into  the  League  of  Nations  and  thus 
become  subordinated  and  lost  in  the  Babel  of  voices  and  vortex  of 
selfish  passions  which  dominate  and  rule  that  incongruous  institution. 
Lincoln  knew  well  what  the  Christian  statesmen  of  England  were  at- 
tempting to  do  with  the  help  of  the  diplomats  of  France  and  the  other 
countries  on  the  Continent.  Gladstone  and  Palmerston  and  Russell  and 
the  vast  majority  of  the  English  and  French  intelligencia  were  ready 
to  gloat  over  the  destruction  of  the  Union,  and  came  within  a  hair's 
breadth  of  realizing  their  ardent  hopes  and  ambitions.  For  anyone  to 
say  that  Father  Abraham  would  have  consented  to  have  his  country, 
his  United  States,  have  one  voice  among  fifty-two  others,  one  voice 
against  fifty-two  others  in  a  league  which  is  represented  by  an  over- 
whelming majority  of  peoples — primitive,  selfish,  under-educated  and 
unprincipled  and  unscrupulous  in  their  diplomacy — for  any  man  to 
imagine  that  Abraham  Lincoln  would  have  ever  exposed  the  country  for 
which  he  fought  and  died  to  the  ipse  dixit  of  an  institution  of  this  kind, 
sprung  into  being  in  the  last  moments  of  the  expiring  Versailles  Confer- 
ence which  met  in  a  spirit  of  revenge,  which  acted  in  the  spirit  of  a 
conqueror  over  the  vanquished,  which  tried  to  extract  from  a  conquered 
foe  the  penalties  of  wars  and  of  differences  of  centuries,  has  not  read 
and  has  not  understood  the  words  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Abraham  Lincoln, 
with  his  immeasurable  sympathy,  never  believed  in  the  principle  of  voi 
victis — woe  to  the  conquered — and  it  was  from  that  atmosphere  that  the 
League  of  Nations  sprang.  That  alone  would  have  made  it  impossible 
for  a  man  of  the  mighty  toleration,  of  the  great  love,  of  the  great  heart 
of  Abraham  Lincoln,  to  participate  in  any  such  conference  or  become  a 
member  of  the  offspring  of  such  a  conference. 

11 


To  anyone  who  has  read  his  letters  and  his  addresses  on  recon- 
struction of  the  conquered  South,  to  anyone  who  knows  that  he  had 
nothing  but  the  hand  of  fellowship  for  Lee,  for  Jefferson  Davis,  for 
Benjamin  and  for  Johnson,  if  they  but  subscribed  to  the  oath  of  fealty, 
it  is  unthinkable  to  believe  that  Lincoln  would  have  become  a  partner 
in  the  bloody  military  cabals  of  the  Balkan  States  and  their  European  co- 
conspirators among  the  greater  powers  who  control  them. 

If  Lincoln  were  alive  today  and  in  a  position  of  power,  he  would 
prevent  the  contamination  of  the  United  States  by  union  with  people 
who  thrive  on  war,  who  believe  in  war,  who  prepare  for  war,  who  pray 
for  war  and  whose  business  is  war.  "Let  us  beware  of  military  glory," 
said  Lincoln.  *'It  is  a  rainbow  made  of  drops  of  blood.  Like  the 
fascination  of  the  serpent,  it  charms  only  to  destroy.'*  He  would  not 
have  permitted  the  Union  of  his  country  with  people  who  do  not  beheve 
in  religious  toleration  and  in  the  equality  of  man,  Lincoln,  this  bewilder- 
ingly  original  genius,  had  a  peculiar  method  of  minding  his  own  affairs 
and  of  having  the  United  States  mind  its  own  affairs;  he  would  have 
actually  advocated  the  principle  of  educating  America  first  and  enlighten- 
ing America  first,  of  saving  America  first,  and  of  making  the  people  of 
America  respected  by  being  tolerant  to  the  stranger  in  their  midst,  before 
he  would  move  to  participate  in  the  business  of  any  other  country  or 
any  other  nation.  He  would  have  been  adamant  on  the  question  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  would  not  have  thrown  it  into  the  ever-boiling 
cauldron  of  European  politics.  This  statesman  of  the  masses  would  have 
been  a  mighty  helper  in  the  struggle  between  capital  and  labor ;  he  would 
have  been  a  tower  of  strength  for  the  oppressed  of  every  nationality. 
He  would  have  laughed  out  of  existence  secret  organizations  as  inimical 
to  our  form  of  government,  and  would  have  led  them  all  into  the  temple 
of  the  Union  where  all  are  equal,  where  all  have  equal  opportunity,  and 
he  would  have  pointed  to  himself  as  he  often  did  when  he  said :  *T  happen 
temporarily  to  occupy  the  White  House.  I  am  a  living  witness  that  any 
one  of  your  children  may  look  to  come  here  as  my  father's  child  has." — 
and  it  might  have  been  his  life's  work  had  he  been  spared  from  the  bullet 
of  the  assassin  to  give  every  child  of  this  broad  land  just  that  opportunity. 
He  would  not  have  made  a  mockery  of  the  majesty  of  the  law  by  enforc- 
ing one  law  and  neglecting  others.  He  would  have  continued  to  act  with 
malice  towards  none  and  charity  to  all.  Justice,  justice  shalt  thou  pursue 
— would  have  been  Lincoln's  policy.  Not  one-sided  justice — not  justice 
directed  at  one  single  commandment — enforce  all  the  laws  impartially 
and  do  not  prefer  one  to  the  other — for  you  would  then  be  partial  to  one 
class  of  criminal,  more  lenient  with  one  than  with  the  other — a  policy 
which  ultimately  leads  to  injustice.  Practice  justice  for  the  sake  of 
justice,  and  not  because  of  popular  acclaim — ''Let  us  have  faith  that  right 
makes  might  and  in  that  faith  let  us  to  the  end  dare  to  do  our  duty  as 
we  understand  it." 

12 


If  Lincoln  were  here  today  he  would  not  require  the  consent  of  an 
ecumenical    conference   to  give   him   permission   to   criticize  an   unfair 
law,  or  a  law  unfairly  enacted.    He  did  not  hesitate  to  criticize  the  Dred 
Scott  decision  in  the  most  rigorous  way — he  went  further;  he  charged 
an  understanding  between  the   dramatic  personae,   in  no  unmistakable 
manner — see  how  he  flays  Taney  and  Douglas,  Pierce  and  Buchanan. 
"We  cannot  absolutely  know  that  these  exact  adaptations  are  the  result 
of  pre-concert,  but  when  we  see  a  lot  of  framed  timbers,  different  por- 
tions of  which  we  know  have  been  gotten  out  at  different  times  and 
places,  and  by  different  workmen — Stephen,  Franklin,  Roger  and  James, 
for  instance;  and  when  we  see  these  timbers  joined  together,  and  see 
they  exactly  make  the  frame  of  a  house  or  a  mill,  all  the  tenons  and 
mortices  exactly  fitting,  and  all  the  lengths  and  proportions  of  the  dif- 
ferent pieces  exactly  adapted  to  their  respective  places,  and  not  a  piece 
too  many  or  too  few, — not  omitting  even  the  scaffolding — or  if  a  single 
piece  be  lacking,  we  see  the  place  in  the  frame  exactly  fitted  and  pre- 
pared to  yet  bring  such  pieces  in — in  such  a  case  we  feel  it  impossible 
not  to  believe  that  Stephen  and  Franklin,  and  Roger  and  James,  all 
understood  one  another  from  the  beginning,  and  all  worked  upon  a  com- 
mon plan  or  draft  drawn  before  the  first  blow  was  struck."    If  for  no 
other  reason,  his  presence  in  these  days  would  have  been  a  dispensation, 
for  he  would  have  demonstrated  the  fallacy  which  has  become  a  great 
shibboleth  of  good  citizenship — that  a  bad  law,  known  to  be  bad,  must 
be  enforced  ad  nauseam  in  order  to  educate  a  community  for  its  repeal. 
He  did  not  belong  to  the  class  who  said :  "My  country,  right  or  wrong — 
nevertheless  my  country."     He  said:  "My  country  must  ever  be  right, 
and  when  wrong  must  acknowledge  that  it  is  wrong  and  must  be  set 
right." — as  he  did  with  the  Trent  Affair,  when  the  entire  North  fairly 
howled  approval  of  the  Captain's  conduct  when  he  seized  the  Southern 
commissioners.     We  cannot  imagine  Lincoln  standing  by  and  knowing 
that  an  idea  or  an  enactment  or  a  bill  or  a  law  was  wrong — and  stand 
idly  by  and  be  cowed  into  worshipping  that  law.     And  yet  no  human 
being  ever  breathed  who  had  a  greater  respect  for  law.     We  all  know 
his  stand  on  immigration,  how  he  had  not  the  heart  to  do  aught  which 
would  prevent  anyone,  who  fled  from  persecution  or  who  came  here  to 
better  his  lot,  from  coming  here.    He  knew  nothing  of  Nordic  or  South 
European — all  he  knew  was  that  one  God  made  us  all.     Now,  some  of 
us  have  discovered  what  he  said,  and  how   farseeing  his  immigration 
policy  was  may  be  seen  from  the  united  North  which  fought  the  Civil 
War  and  then  the  Great  War  in  our  own  day — the  roar  of  cannon  knows 
no  distinction  between  Hollander,  English,  French  or  German  descen- 
dants of  our  early  immigrants !    Some  of  us  still  recall  the  inspired  war 
cartoon  showing  the  fusion  of  all  nationalities  in  the  defense  of  our 
country — ^the  young  men  with  those  unpronounceable  names  who  fought 

13 


so  nobly  and  so  well.  Would  he  look  with  favor  upon  an  alien  registra- 
tion law?  He  certainly  would  not;  he  would  write  another  letter  to 
Speed,  which  would  read  as  follows: 

.  Our  progress  in  degeneracy  appears  to  be  pretty  rapid. 
As  a  Nation  we  began  by  declaring  that  'All  men  are  created  free  and 
equal.'  We  now  practically  read  it:  'AH  men  are  created  equal,  except 
negroes.'  When  Know-nothings  get  control — 'All  men  are  created  equal 
except  negroes,  foreigners  and  Catholics!'  When  it  comes  to  this,  I 
shall  prefer  emigrating  to  some  country  where  they  make  no  pretence 
of  loving  liberty — to  Russia,  for  instance,  where  despotism  can  be  taken 
pure,  and  without  even  the  base  alloy  of  hypocrisy." 

He  would  have  stamped  out  religious  persecution  in  every  shape  as 
he  stamped  out  sedition  and  secession.  He  pleaded  for  peaceful  solution 
of  the  overwhelming  problem  which  confronted  him — and  Lincoln's  diffi- 
culties at  that  time  have  never  been  adequately  portrayed — ^and  when  that 
failed,  and  when  the  blind  Southern  leaders,  bent  on  secession,  became 
the  aggressors,  he  firmly  and  unflaggingly  saw  the  War  to  a  successful 
end.  Nor  was  he  diverted  from  his  purpose  by  other  entanglements. 
"One  war  at  a  time,"  was  his  slogan;  but  he  was  prepared  for  the  next 
problem  the  moment  the  War  was  over.  He  would  have  ended  the 
cowardly  attack  of  sects  levelled  against  their  neighbors  simply  because 
of  religious  differences  or  because  of  the  differences  in  time  of  their 
arrival  on  these  shores.  He  would  have  spoken  directly  and  clearly  as 
he  did  when  he  delivered  his  "House  divided"  speech  in  spite  of  the 
advice  of  his  entire  party  of  advisors  and  managers  who  wailed  that 
defeat  was  certain  should  he  utter  those  fatal  words — which  he  did  utter 
— and  which  were  heard  by  an  aroused  people  from  coast  to  coast.  His 
living  words  about  our  attitude  towards  negroes  and  Catholics  just 
quoted  are  ample  proof  of  this  claim  as  to  what  he  would  have  done  were 
he  in  office  today  on  the  underlying  problem  of  toleration. 

He  would  have  been  for  arbitration,  universal  in  its  application ;  not 
arbitration  with  loaded  dice;  arbitration  such  as  would  insure  not  only 
all  people  of  the  earth  an  honest  verdict,  but  which  would  protect  the 
United  States  from  envious  and  rapacious  claims  and  plots  and  schemes 
of  the  war-impoverished  peoples  of  the  world,  whose  sole  aim  in  life 
seems  to  be  the  unloading  of  all  the  troubles  of  the  world  upon  our  heads. 
He  would  have  seen  that ;  he  would  have  understood  that ;  and  he,  with 
his  amazing  personality  would  have  accomplished  what  seems  to  be  so 
hard  for  us  to  understand  and  cope  with. 

He  would  not  have  permitted  the  Civil  Service  to  become  the  Frank- 
enstein which  it  has  become.  "Appoint  that  man  Colonel  of  the  regiment 
regardless   of   whether  he  knows   the  color  of   Caesar's   hair." — is   so 

14 


eloquent  a  commentary  as  to  what  he  would  have  done  with  the  entire 
breed  of  the  reformers  of  our  service — who  have  reformed  and  improved 
it  to  such  a  point  that  they  have  driven  out  of  political  life  every  up- 
standing and  unbendable  mind,  so  many  of  whom  we  met  in  office  in 
Lincoln's  day.  He  would  not  have  tolerated  in  our  service  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  principle  based  upon  the  legend  of  the  visitor's  bed  in  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah — a,  bed  of  one  given  size — prepared  for  the  unfortunate 
guest  who  would  sojourn  in  those  then  up-to-date  municipalities.  The 
Civil  Service  cuts  off  his  legs  if  he  is  too  long  or  stretches  his  limbs  if 
he  is  too  short.  He  must  fit  in  this  Civil  Service  bed  of  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah ;  for  the  Civil  Service  man  has  measured  the  bed  and  the  berth 
and  there  is  the  end.  Lincoln  would  never  have  subscribed  to  such  a 
theory.  "See  and  speak  to  this  man." — read  many  of  his  comments  on 
petitions  for  all  manner  of  requests  to  the  government.  Nowadays  we 
don't  see  and  we  don't  speak  to  anyone — the  examination  paper  as  marked 
and  appraised  by  an  omniscient  examiner  in  the  absence  of  the  victim,  is 
decisive  and  final  and  unappealable. 

Foreign  debts?  Did  we  pay  our  debts  of  1776  to  France  and  to 
the  others?  Bring  forth  the  records — Lincoln  never  would  have  heeded 
such  much  prayed  for  international  disavowal  of  debts ;  Lincoln  himself 
paid  every  dollar  of  the  debts  incurred  by  his  drunken  partner,  although 
it  took  him  twelve  years  to  do  it.  Such  anxious  and  premeditated  volun- 
tary bankruptcies  of  debtors  for  loans  which  were  borrowed  in  the  name 
of  liberty  and  for  the  purpose  of  achieving  freedom  from  the  oppressor 
and  which  were  promised  to  be  repaid  with  great  solemnity  by  these 
countries  with  interest  and  with  gratitude.  So-called  gratitude  we  get,  but 
neither  principle  nor  interest  seems  to  be  forthcoming  from  any  of  them, 
excepting  from  England.  But  all  of  them  are  even  now  trying  to  bring 
us  into  their  League  in  order  not  only  not  to  pay  what  is  due  to  us,  but 
use  us  as  the  general  messenger  and  the  general  utility  man,  as  their 
overwhelming  majority  therein  might  direct. 

We  can  sum  up  Lincoln's  attitude  on  all  these  questions  by  a  single 
quotation — a  complete  philosophy  of  life — his  chief  concern  in  life: 

"A  struggle  for  maintaining  in  the  world  that  form  and  substance 
of  government  whose  leading  object  is  to  elevate  the  condition  of  men, 
to  lift  artificial  weights  from  all  shoulders,  to  clear  the  paths  of  laudable 
pursuits  for  all,  to  afford  all  an  unfettered  start  and  a  fair  chance  in  the 
race  of  life." 

And  to  those  who  are  discontent  with  limiting  the  sphere  of  action 
of  our  great  Emancipator  and  are  bound  to  make  him  a  citizen  of  the 
world,  I  have  but  to  say  that  his  resplendent  example  alone  will  suffice 
for  those  other  nations  of  the  world  who  would  have  some  of  his  glory 

15 


and  who  would  have  a  share  in  his  great  heritage  which  he  left  to  all 
the  children  of  men  and  as  of  the  great  Jewish  lawgiver  of  old,  we  can 
say  of  him: 

'*     .      .      .     he  is  more  than  ours  as  we  are  more 

Than  yet  the  world  dares  dream.     His  stature  grows 

With  that  illimitable  state 

Whose  sovereignty  ordains  no  tribute  shore, 

And  borderland  of  hate. 

But  grounds  its  justice  in  the  joy  it  sows. 

His  spirit  is  still  a  power  to  emancipate 

Bondage — more  base,  being  more  insidious, 

Than  serfdom — ^that  cries  out  in  the  midst  of  us 

For  virtue,  born  of  opportunity. 

And  manhood,  weighed  in  honest  human  worth. 

And  freedom,  best  in  labor.     He  stands  forth 

'Mongst  nations  old — a  new-world  Abraham, 

The  patriarch  of  peoples  still  to  be     .      .      ." 


16 


i 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

I'i'JiVERSlTY  OF  ILLIf^OIS 


The  Many-Sided  Lincoln 

What  Would  He  Do  Were  He 
Here  Today  ? 

"By 

EMANUEL     HERTZ 


LIBRARY 
OF  THE 


AN   ADDRESS    DEUVERED    AT   WASHINGTON    HEIGHTS   CONGREGATION 

FEBRUARY  12.   1926 


MJODMiJ  aaai 

STiI3H     J3UV1A 


An  edition  of  1000  copies  of  this  address  has  been 
printed  of  which  this  copy  is  No. 


noiTADaaowoD  axHDiaH  VLOTOvumAV/  ta  aaaavkiHa  zaaaaoA  wa 


^H^^^>^  LIBRARY 

-       C-ifOp    ^  Ifl-^IVERSITY  OF  JLUHOIS 

THE     MANY-SIDED     LINCOLN   —   WHAT 
WOULD  HE  DO  WERE  HE  HERE  TODAY? 

By  EMANUEL  HERTZ 

(An  address  delivered  in  honor  of  the  memory  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
at  the  Annual  Services  of  the  Forum  of  Washington  Heights 
Congregation    in    the    City    of    New    York    on    February    12,    1926.) 

HE  whimsical  caricaturist  who  draws  an  array  of  studies  of 
possible  portraits  of  Abraham  Lincoln  by  Murillo,  Van  Dyke, 
Velasquez,  Michael  Angelo,  Raphael,  Hals,  Whistler,  Millet 
and  Rembrandt,  each  one  after  the  manner  of  his  age  and 
after  the  mode  then  prevalent  in  his  country — if  these  masters  had  indeed 
painted  Lincoln — has  but  exemplified  what  is  happening  to  the  great  ,War 
President  at  the  hands  of  novelist-historians,  and  biographer-poets.  They 
summon  up  before  our  gaze  an  Abraham  Lincoln  who  never  lived  and 
who,  had  he  read  some  of  these  effusions,  would  have  been  puzzled  as 
to  who  was  really  the  subject  of  these  biographical  phantasmagorias. 
On  the  theory  of  producing  something  new,  we  have  these  later-day 
biographers  rhapsodize  about  Lincoln's  extremely  prosaic  childhood  and 
reenact  an  Iliad  of  woe  through  which  he  forged  his  weary  way,  and 
this  array  of  authors  has  drawn  out  the  history  of  his  family  for  seven 
generations  with  a  meticulous  minuteness  rarely  lavished  upon  the  scion 
of  an  imperial  family — while  Lincoln  himself  spoke'  of  his  family's  life 
story  as  "The  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor."  But  the  spirit  of 
piling  Ossa  on  Pelion  will  not  down  and  by  sheer  force  of  volume  of 
research  Lincoln  is  forced  into  a  heraldic  Almanac  de  Gotha  of  his  own. 
But  this  wise  man  of  the  Civil  War  era  has  left  an  effective  antidote  to 
all  such  futile  effort — ^to  make  him  appear  other  than  he  really  was.  He 
wrote  and  he  spokef  his  philosophy  of  life,  his  ideals  and  theory  of  gov- 
ernment, his  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  his  views  of  the  duty  of  the 
citizen  to  his  country,  and  the  relationships  of  man  to  man,  of  employer 
to  employee,  of  commander  to  common  soldier,  of  President  to  his 
Cabinet,  to  his  Congress,  to  his  War  Governors,  he  wrote  these  thoughts 
and  reflections  and  duties  and  rights  into  his  addresses,  into  his  messages 
and  into  his  lectures  and  into  his  letters.  Examine  an  index  to  his  col- 
lected works — to  those  which  have  appeared  in  print,  and  you  will  se^ 
lucid  expressions  of  opinion  on  a  multiplicity  of  subjects.  Read  the 
speech  or  the  letter  or  the  message  covei-ing  any  particular  subject,  and 
you  will  find  a  gem — a  nugget  of  pure  gold  direct  from  the  heart  of 


989200 


Abraham  Lincoln.  And  but  for  the  lamentable  lack  of  study  of  those 
precious  works,  we  have  seen  grow  up  in  the  minds  of  many,  a  cadaverous- 
looking  charcoal  sketch  of  the  great  American — with  one  or  two  fables  or 
events  tacked  on  to  the  caricature  of  what  was  as  noble  an  apparition 
when  seen  in  all  its  remarkable  manifestations  as  is  the  impression  made 
upon  our  minds  by  the  undimmed  splendors  of  the  rising  sun.  Close  upon 
those  romancers  who  persist  in  having  the  babbling  brook,  the  song  of 
the  birds,  the  whistling  of  the  wind,  the  glimmer  of  moonlight  on  the 
waves  of  the  rivulet  as  indispensable  parts  of  the  landscape  traversed  by 
the  youthful  Lincoln,  are  those  who  profess  to  find  that  he  has  excelled 
in  one,  and  in  only  one  field  of  endeavor.  These  now  profess  and  proceed 
to  demonstrate  that  this  or  that  particular  specialty  in  which  Lincoln 
excelled,  enabled  him  in  after  life  to  solve  the  problems  which  he  was 
called  upon  to  cope  with.  The  ignorance  and  arrogance  of  this  class  of 
biographers  and  romancers  has  actually  diverted  the  gaze  of  the  multi- 
tude from  the  real  character  of  Lincoln.  The  reverend  homage  paid  to 
the  printed  word  simply  because  it  is  printed,  simply  helps  along  these 
multitudes  of  inventions.  Every  season  brings  its  five'-foot  bookshelf  of 
Lincoln  books  and  addresses,  and  they  all  look  distressingly  alike  in 
workmanship. 

Why  not,  in  justice  to  him  and  all  those  who  ought  to  know  him 
as  he  was,  go  back  to  the  source,  the  only  source  of  all  our  reliable  in- 
formation? Why  not  call  upon  all  who  know  or  have  a  letter  or  docu- 
ment which  would  shed  any  light  on  Lincoln,  to  produce  and  publish  it? 
Let  us  study  Abraham  Lincoln  as  he  was.  Let  us  hold  him  up  to  our 
children  in  his  real  habiliments  of  body  and  of  mind?  Let  us  start  with 
the  young  Lincoln  in  the  Illinois  Assembly;  let  us  follow  him  through 
five  years  of  legislative  life  at  his  desk  in  the  legislature — the  desk  which 
is  even  now  looking  for  a  permanent  resting  place.  Let  us  read  the 
letters,  the  speeches  and  the  Lyceum  addresses  of  that  period.  Let  us 
follow  him  as  he  studied  law  from  the  moment  he  found  a  copy  of 
Blackstone  at  the  bottom  of  the  old  barrel.  Let  us  follow  him  as  he 
practiced  law  for  many  years  and  come  to  know  Lincoln  the  lawyer. 
Oh,  what  a  wonderful  tale — truthful  to  the  letter,  can  be  told  about  this 
young  champion  of  deserving  causes — this  champion  of  the  widow  and 
guardian  angel  of  the  orphan — this  great  and  good  man  who  strove  for 
justice,  with  truth — truth,  the  seal  of  God — as  his  lodestone.  He  would 
right  a  wrong,  he  would  struggle  for  an  unfortunate  client — always 
provided  that  he  was  convinced  of  his  honesty  and  of  the  justice  of  his 
cause.  He  could  not  last  as  the  advocate  of  evil.  He  withdrew  and 
cleansed  himself  of  the  contact  with  evil.  He  became  the  jury  lawyer  of 
his  day  in  the  State  of  Illinois.  And  yet  no  man  ever  lived  who  would  have 
made  a  better  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
President  Taft — who  picked  and  appointed  more  Judges  than  any  other 


President  save  only  Washington — is  authority  for  this  claim,  and  Senator 
Beveridge  in  his  immortal  life  of  the  great  Chief  Justice  pictures  Lincoln 
as  an  almost  indistinguishable  colleague  and  companion  of  one  for  the 
other.  But  all  of  this  does  not  demonstrate  that  Lincoln  was  a  great 
lawyer  only — a  lawyer  to  the  exclusion  of  all  else.  It  was  one  of  the 
many  occupations  thrust  upon  him  by  a  Divine  Providence,  preparing 
him  for  the  greater  tasks,  for  the  more  exacting  ordeals,  yet  to  come. 
We  find  another  student  of  the  great  Commoner  studying  Lincoln's 
political  activities  from  his  appearance  on  the  platform  during  his  first 
candidacy  for  office  down  to  his  re-election  for  the  Presidency  in  1864. 
He  will  examine  the  newspapers  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  a  score  of 
States  in  order  to  demonstrate  that  it  was  not  Lincoln  the  lawyer,  but 
Lincoln  the  political  leader  or  statesman  who  really  made  the  great  im- 
pression on  his  times. 

An  old  veteran  of  the  Civil  War  attempts  to  demonstrate  that  the 
great  joint  debate  was  really  the  climax  of  his  career  and  he  digests  the 
opinions  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  contemporary  journals  to  show 
that  his  thesis  is  the  only  one  that  fits  the  great  debater,  the  great  tribune 
of  the  common  people. 

There  are  others  who  were  slow  to  recognize  his  great  worth  and 
who  began  to  see  him  and  know  him  under  the  great  storm  and  stress  of 
the  Civil  War — in  that  beleagured  city — Washington.  His  dealings  with 
a  refractory  Congress,  his  troubles  with  Northern  States,  loyal,  but  slow 
in  responding  to  the  call  of  the  Union.  His  countering  the  assaults  of  the 
disloyal  in  his  own  ranks,  his  warding  off  blows  for  misguided  friends, 
his  course  of  education  of  an  entire  country — that  the  Union  must  be 
preserved — presented  an  entirely  new  theory  to  the  historian  of  the  Civil 
War.  He  discovered  a  figure  towering  over  and  above  all  others  around 
him — a  sublime  figure  under  every  phase  of  the  cataclysm — a  figure  heroic, 
sublime,  majestic,  holding  to  the  steering  wheel  of  the  Union  and  steering 
for  safety,  to  victory.  This  man  is  reaching  the  conclusion  Seward 
reached — "We  must  revise  our  opinion  of  this  man."  We  knew  him  not. 
We  have  a  great  War  President — uncanny  in  his  knowledge  and  ability 
to  cope  with  so  many  distracting  problems  at  the  same  time — there  is 
something  superhuman  about  it  all.  Stanton,  the  imperious,  is  subdued; 
Seward,  the  all- wise  is  awed ;  Wells,  the  faithful  is  beginning  to  see  a 
great  light.  Senators,  congressmen,  governors,  generals  unwilling  but 
inevitably,  are  drawn  by  the  giant  magnet  of  common  sense,  of  thorough- 
ness of  human  sympathy — all  are  drawn  on  for  help,  for  guidance,  for 
information,  for  re-heartening,  for  strength,  for  faith  in  the  ultimate 
victory  of  the  Union  under  its  great  pilot.  Hence  the  evolution  of 
Lincoln,  the  statesman,  the  great  War  President,  the  master  of  men. 
(What  a  misnomer  to  be  applied  to  that  humble  burden  bearer.) 


The  leaders  of  religion  are  now  turning  their  gaze  upon  the  lonely 
spokesman  of  the  Union — who  speaks  in  the  language  of  the  Prophets, 
who  seems  to  have  sprung  from  between  the  pages  of  the  Bible — for 
does  he  not  use  Bible  phrases,  parables,  nuggets  of  wisdom  like  the 
Lawgiver  of  old?  Did  he  not  see  the  Union  on  fire  but  not  destroyed — 
the  bush  burning  but  not  destroyed  by  the  fire?  Did  he  not  hear  the 
call  from  amid  the  flames  of  the  embers  which  made  up  the  toppling 
Union — "Go  and  save  the  Union?"  And  did  he  not  answer  joyfully, 
anxiously:  "Here  am  I?"  Preacher  and  teacher,  priest  and  religious 
leader  recognize  a  kinship  between  his  President  and  his  Prophets  and 
his  saints  and  his  martyrs,  those  who  made  up  the  list  of  those  who 
strove  to  make  man  free  and  independent  and  enlightened.  They  begin 
to  recognize  a  kinship  to  Abraham,  to  Moses,  to  Paul,  to  Savonarola 
(what  a  striking  likeness  of  emaciated  profile),  to  Wyclif,  to  Cromwell, 
to  Calvin,  to  William  the  Silent,  whose  taking  off  the  little  children 
bewailed  as  did  an  entire  grief -stricken  country  bewail  the  untimely  death 
of  his  modern  replica;  and  when  he  was  consigned  as  belonging  to  the 
ages — every  teacher  and  preacher  of  God's  Word  paid  his  share  in  a 
universal  requiem  rendered  to  the  martyred  hero  of  the  epic  called 
America. 

The  stylist  and  scholar,  the  student  of  language  who  is  freer  from 
charlatanism  than  most  people,  begins  to  study  the  text.  He  reads  Lincoln's 
addresses,  his  messages  and  his  letters.  He  asks  himself  where  did  this 
man  derive  his  pure  English  style  ?  How  is  it  that  he  is  so  free  from  the 
baneful  style  of  political  speaker  and  writer?  How  brief,  how  simple, 
how  pure,  how  clear  his  thought  and  his  style  and  his  mode  of  expres- 
sion? He  now  tries  to  find  a  prototype  and  he  goes  far  back  to  ancient 
Greece  and  finds  in  Pericles  the  only  man  to  whose  oration  he  can  com- 
pare this  novel  style  and  Aesop,  the  only  one  whose  tales  resemble  Honest 
Abe's.  Few  spirits  have  spoken  thus — two  or  three  in  all  the  intervening 
ages.  This  man  is  a  great  exemplar  of  English  prose  style;  but  hold, 
some  of  it  reads  like  blank  verse.  What  a  wonderful  man  is  this  who 
in  the  short  space  of  time  mastered  the  English  language  within  which 
to  clothe  these  undying  ideas  and  ideals.  The  literary  critic  now  reads 
his  letters  and  begins  to  understand  why  the  newspapermen  of  his  day 
— and  there  were  giants  in  that  profession  in  those  days,  demanded  letters 
from  Lincoln  on  all  the  many  questions  and  problems  of  the  day — because 
all  read  them,  all  quoted  them.  He  hardly  opened  his  lips  but  he  said 
something  which  will  not  die.  Was  there  ever  such  another  letter-writer  ? 
Letters  in  which  sentiments  ran  the  gamut  of  all  the  emotions  of  a  bleed- 
ing, embattled  nation  struggling  through  the  darkness  to  light,  through 
rebellion  and  treason  to  victory  and  union.  The  Epistles  of  Lincoln — 
what  an  alluring  title  to  some  new  novelist-historian  of  a  great  national 
hero  and  martyr ! 

6 


And  now  come  the  mothers,  the  heartbr^ajcpn  |T)pt!^r^^j  j^h^^pgliji^- 
stricken  mothers,  the  tear-bhnded  mothers,  the  PA^e,  ei^gi;s^t^4vM^Ut^^^f^ 
mothers,  they  came  to  Lincoln,  to  Mr.  Lincoln,-^  tg^j^  ^?jp^^^f5^-^^ir€|4> 
sleepless,  exhausted,  red-lidded,  hollow  cheeked/, {t}iiftj;bi^cJp9ri^>^^§l'jF.9^ 
humanity,  literally  dropping  under  his  great  burdfapoiMd  fe©??-V^h^^ 
mothers,  and  hears  their  heartbreaking  appeals  oic^vfiT^^^pg  ^^^<^^\gp^ 
of  their  boys — the  victims  of  army  discipline  thp^glj^^jtli^v/age^s^TT^i^ 
Father  Abraham,  but  lately  bereft  of  his  own  chil(}Tr0!^l?dl^/v6)fllffifl^lfcy 
as  he  hears  these  heartbroken  mothers  of  the  Uniov^tHl^drfMs^h^Vd^' 
spring,  and  he  pardons  and  he  pardons  and  he  pardQ^i^Q^i^t^loA^^iJI^^J^pljd 
in  him  the  Angel  of  Mercy  at  the  throne  of  the  Most[>IJjgl|  gl^e^jdi^J^tfef 
pardon  for  all.  He  pardons,  while  the  generals  threat^^/j^p-^tf^^y  ^W^^ 
Stanton  growls  over  the  undermined  morale  of  the  arrqj^.  w4e>W^^fn^h?ik 
tered  discipline.  "Stanton,  is  not  this  boy  of  more  use  jt%|)^-,^^^%(5)^ 
earth  than  under  earth?" — and  so  we  behold  the  subli^[^j^^ji|^^j5^ 
Lincoln,  the  Pardoner — eclipsing  that  of  the  lawyer,  of  ^fee  f^Jj^gi^, 
of  the  debater,  of  the  legislator,  of  the  statesman,  of  th^3p:fj^jutfi]tr.f0^jqif 
the  stylist,  of  the  letterwriter,  and  for  a  moment  we  behol^  ii^jj^j^tgpfiSji- 
tion  the  two  great  solemn  pictures — Lincoln  the  Comforter  of^^y^i^jtl^l- 
of  the  pardoned  boy,  and  Napoleon  standing  rigid  over  fj^r&leepiu^ 
sentinel  who  awakes  and  beholds  his  emperor  on  guard — and  higjj-revo.Gja,!- 
ble  doom  pictured  in  the  inexorable  features  of  his  emperor !    Choose  the 

picture  which  appeals  more  to  the  universal  human  heart.  .',   ,    „ 

^  ^^  lid   ballBD 

And  so,  step  by  step,  we  find  the  pardoner  of  the  young:-' feoM^ 
become  the  pardoner  of  the  entire  South — a  friend  of  Jeffersoft  'Da'i^si, 
and  of  Lee,  and  of  Stephens,  whenever  they  are  ready  to  utter  the  i^oM^ 
"Union".  And  then  his  task  is  done — the  task  for  which  he  linge^M^Uh 
entire  lifetime — the  task  for  which  he  prepared  in  the  country  stof^, 'Mi 
the  post  office,  in  the  legislature,  in  the  surveyor's  office,  in  the  couft^, 
on  the  hustings,  in  Congress,  in  the  debate  with  Douglas,  in  C66p&r 
Union — the  task  of  grasping  the  wheel  of  the  Ship  of  State  surrourtd^ 
by  rocks,  by  wreckers,  by  lightning — steering  clear  through  the  Sc^lfe 
of  secession  and  the  Charybdis  of  disloyalty  in  the  North — this  task  doftfe 
— completely  done,  and  he  was  no  more,  for  like  Enoch,  God  took  hiM. 
This  many-sided  messenger  of  God  sent  to  right  the  wrongs  of  a  race— 
held  in  subjugation,  in  defiance  of  all  that  was  right  and  of  all  that 
was  just — indefiance  of  a  higher  law  that  was  becoming  dominant  in 
the  land,  although  it  required  a  repetition  of  the  ancient  plague — that  all 
the  first-born  of  the  oppressors  would  have  to  be  slain  before  the  children 
of  bondage  would  be  let  go. 

Let  us  all  repair  to  the  great  quarry,  his  recorded  words,  his  preach- 
ments, his  maxims,  and  let  us  complete  the  great  structure,  let  us  gather 
from  all  the  comers  of  the  globe  his  written  words  and  complete  the 

7 


task  so  well  begun.  Let  us  classify  all  he  said  and  all  he  preached — 
and  what  will  result?  We  will  erect  a  structure  to  which  all  the  people 
of  the  earth  can  come  for  guidance  and  inspiration.  Would  a  political 
leader  seek  light  and  leading  let  him  study  the  political  utterances  of  our 
many-sided  Lincoln.  Would  an  executive  not  merely  ask  himself  per- 
functorily, "What  would  Lincoln  do  today?"  let  him  read  and  have  his 
answer.  Would  you  have  patent  for  loyalty  and  patriotism  let  him  read 
Lincoln  who  declared  that  he  would  be  the  last  man  to  defy  the  enemies 
of  his  country  when  all  others  had  given  up.  Would  you  desire  to  find 
a  method  of  exposing  a  false  prophet  of  a  wicked  cause — study  his  joint 
debate  with  Douglas.  Would  you  know  how  to  immortalize  those  who 
gave  up  their  lives  that  the  Union  might  live,  go  with  me  to  Gettysburg — 
and  in  solemn  silence  meditate  what  he  there  spoke  for  eternity.  Would 
you  know  how  to  cleanse  the  Augean  stables  of  a  putrid  and  treasonable 
administration — see  what  he  did  when  he  displaced  the  infirm  and  petulant 
Buchanan,  on  the  point  of  surrendering  all  to  the  enemies  of  his  country. 
Would  you  learn  how  to  manage  an  administration  open  to  assault  from 
without  and  from  within  with  those  closest  to  you  trying  to  embroil  you 
in  universal  war — see  what  Lincoln  did  from  the  moment  he  came  to 
Washington  through  the  long  and  weary  years  of  the  nerve- wrecking  and 
heart-breaking  war. 

Lincoln,  the  Diplomat!  How  they  would  have  smiled  had  someone 
called  him  that  ten  years  earlier — divined  what  the  rascally  Napoleon 
was  doing  with  the  agents  of  the  Confederacy — Lincoln,  the  diplomat 
solved  and  disposed  of  the  Trent  Affair  and  confounded  the  conspiracy 
of  Gladstone,  Palmerston  and  Russell  to  recognize  the  Confederacy  by 
timing  the  issuing  of  his  Emancipation  Proclamation,  not  to  please 
Wendell  Phillips  or  Beecher  or  Greeley,  but  in  time  to  prevent  action 
by  an  English  Cabinet  called  for  the  purpose  of  recognizing  the  Con- 
federacy— he  made  it  clear  that  taking  such  action  would  place  Christian 
England  in  the  position  of  the  advocate  and  champion  of  the  whipping 
post,  of  the  auction  block  and  of  the  Moloch  of  slavery.  Diplomat, 
indeed,  was  Lincoln,  who  picked  Dayton  for  Paris  and  Sanford  at  Brus- 
sels, who  gathered  all  the  munitions  available  on  the  Continent  and 
Adams  for  England  in  time  to  tell  his  lordship  that  releasing  the  Alabama 
was  war!  And  on  the  117th  Anniversary  of  his  birth.  Sir  Frederick 
Maurice,  one  who  judged  the  military  events  of  the  Great  War  with 
knowledge  and  keen  discernment,  finds  a  great  military  authority  in 
our  great  War  President  who  learned  the  great  lesson  of  War  and  of 
warfare  in  an  amazingly  short  time  and  from  a  military  standpoint  he 
knew  more  and  understood  more  than  all  his  civil  and  military  advisors, 
one  who  followed  understanding^  every  great  battle  from  Chancellors- 
ville  and  Antietam  through  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg,  down  to  Appomat- 
tox.    Lincoln  knew  the  war  map  better  than  his  generals  and  had  his 

8 


advice  been  followed  on  a  number  of  occasions,  the  war  would  have  been 
shortened  by  years. 

But  in  no  capacity  does  he  appear  to  greater  advantage  than  he  does 
in  the  White  House — the  mecca  for  every  human  being,  either  singly  or 
in  droves,  seeking  advice,  having  a  request,  an  idea,  a  petition,  or  a 
message.  What  a  motley  number  they  were — foreign  ministers,  war 
correspondents,  governors.  Southern  sympathizers,  generals,  soldiers, 
preachers,  teachers,  journalists,  financiers,  the  entire  army  personnel, 
cabinet  officers,  senators,  political  leaders — all  came  early  and  often  to 
advise,  cajole,  petition,  harass  and  annoy  the  man  of  many  sorrows,  the 
man  of  many  pardons,  who  was  trying  in  spite  of  them  all,  to  do  the 
work  he  was  called  upon  to  perform.  All  of  these  came  and  saw  and 
heard  for  themselves  what  this  many-sided  man  said  and  did  and  accom- 
plished. A  great  many  of  these  have  in  one  form  or  another  recorded 
their  impressions  of  the  man,  recorded  their  recollections  of  how  he 
acquitted  himself  under  the  most  trying  ordeals  and  all  seem  to  agree 
that  this  was  no  ordinary  man.  This  man,  who  saw  all,  who  heard  all, 
who  endured  slander  and  abuse  such  as  has  never  been  levelled  against 
any  one  human  being — and  finally  convinced  even  those  of  their  iniquity 
— this  man  who  was  never  found  wanting,  who  was  never  unprepared — 
this  was  indeed  no  ordinary  man. 

And  we,  the  heirs  of  this  great  soul,  we  should  dedicate  ourselves 
to  the  task  of  rescuing  Abraham  Lincoln  from  the  hands  of  his  detractors. 
We,  the  citizens  of  the  land  he  died  to  preserve,  owe  it  to  his  memory  to 
gather  lovingly  all  the  shreds  and  all  the  words,  all  the  sayings  and  all 
the  precepts  that  fell  from  his  lips  wherever  recorded  and  preserved  and 
demand  in  the  name  of  justice,  in  the  name  of  fairness,  that  all  the 
documents,  letters,  legal  papers,  inscriptions,  passes,  comments  and 
speeches  in  existence  anywhere,  everywhere,  be  produced  for  publication 
to  the  end  that  we  might  reproduce  the  dead  leader  to  our  people  in  all 
his  many-sided  endowments  with  all  the  multitude  of  kindnesses,  of 
virtues  he  displayed,  as  engraved  in  the  missives  which  came  from  his 
heart  to  every  other  wounded  heart,  to  every  sorrowing  mother,  to  every 
war-weary  patriot — who  asked  for  and  received  the  treasured  words  of 
consolation  written  in  that  beautiful  script  by  the  hand  that  was  guided 
by  the  great  immortal  soul  in  the  White  House. 

And  now  what  would  this  many-sided  Lincoln  have  done  with  the 
problems  of  the  day?  is  a  question  which  every  now  and  then  one  of  our 
Lincoln  Day  orators,  one  of  our  statesmen  in  responsible  positions  asks. 
An  answer  to  that  question  has  been  attempted  a  great  many  times  but 
very  few  answers  have  been  given  in  the  light  of  Lincoln's  performances. 
The  sad  and  distressing  phase  about  the  whole  thing  seems  to  be  that 


all  those  who  ask  the  question,  not  unlike  his  biographers,  studiously 
refrain  from  reading  Lincoln's  speeches  and  letters.  They  refrain  from 
studying  his  political  acts  and  performances.  In  the  light  of  these  we 
can  truthfully  state  that  Lincoln  certainly  would  not  divide  his  followers 
into  patricians  and  plebeians.  Lincoln  certainly  would  not  have  divided 
the  voters  of  this  country  into  a  fighting  organization  and  into  an  office- 
holding  organization.  The  man  who  would  fight  the  battles  of  the  Re- 
public; the  man  who  would  preach  Lincoln's  doctrine  would  not  be  dis- 
qualified by  his  preachment  from  carrying  out  Lincoln's  policies  in  office. 

A  political  leader  with  Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  man  to  be  consid- 
ered and  consulted — Read  the  letters  to  Thurlow  Weed,  to  Senator 
Cameron,  to  Lyman  Trumbull,  to  Hannibal  Hamlin  and  to  a  host  of 
others.  And  it  goes  without  saying  that  the  political  party  today  which 
practices  that  sane  and  practical  political  principle  of  Abraham  Lincoln's, 
of  having  the  preachers  of  political  policy  become  the  performers  in 
office,  that  party  succeeds  and  continues  to  succeed ;  but  the  party  which 
has  one  portion  do  the  work  of  electing  and  then  is  made  to  make  way 
for  people  unheard  of  until  after  election,  and  who  by  some  necromancy 
convince  or  bedevil  the  appointing  power  that  they,  and  not  the  workers, 
should  fill  the  offices;  the  party  which  practices  this  false  political  prin- 
ciple fails  at  succeeding  elections  and  continues  to  go  down  to  defeat 
until  it  ceases  to  be  a  factor;  for  it  does  not  deserve  to  live. 

And  when  the  political  leader  nowadays  asks :  ''What  would  Lincoln 
do  if  he  were  here  today?"  we  can  tell  him  that  Lincoln  would  do  just 
that — reward  the  deserving  political  worker  with  political  preferment  after 
he  had  participated  and  made  possible  the  victory  of  the  party. 

Different  panaceas  for  eliminating  corruption  in  high  places  received 
but  scant  consideration  from  that  direct  political  descendant  of  old  Samuel 
Adams  who  said:  "Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty."  And  if 
Lincoln  could  busy  himself  with  politics  every  day  of  the  year  he  could 
see  no  reason  why  others  should  not  do  the  same  thing.  Lincoln  believed 
in  a  trained  political  party — lieutenants  who  would  not  only  appreciate 
the  principles  the  party  stood  for,  but  who  were  trained  and  prepared  to 
carry  out  those  party  principles  in  such  a  manner  as  would  result  in 
strengthening  the  Union.  Political  volunteers  to  him  were  as  good  and 
as  bad  as  volunteers  in  the  army  who  came  for  thirty  or  sixty  days  and 
whose  one  thought  during  their  period  of  volunteering  was  the  anxiety 
to  return  home.  It  was  only  after  the  army  was  drilled  and  trained  and 
made  permanent  that  victories  were  made  possible. 

And  if  Lincoln  were  here  today  he  would  preach  and  practice  that 
only  trained  political  leaders  are  worth  anything  in  our  body  politic  and 
that  the  volunteers  of  a  week  or  ten  days  before  election,  for  the  purpose 

10 


of  filling  the  office,  if  successful,  would  make  no  impression  upon  that 
master  politician  today  any  more  than  they  would  have  in  his  own  time. 

The  questioner  as  to  what  Lincoln  would  do  on  different  occasions 
might  well  be  answered  by  referring  him  to  what  Lincoln  said  and  did. 
His  tariff  policy  was  clear  and  made  clear  by  the  tersest  and  clearest 
statement — which  once  more  shows  the  cloudless  lucidity  of  his  mind. 
What  would  Lincoln  have  done  about  National  Defence  and  National 
participation  in  international  affairs?  The  answer  to  the  first  question 
when  tested  by  his  actual  words  and  deeds  can  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
he  organized  the  greatest  army  and  navy  any  country  ever  had  up  to  his 
day.  And  the  other  question,  which  so  many  have  attempted  to  answer 
for  him,  can  easily  be  answered  by  anyone  who  knows  what  a  firm  be- 
liever Lincoln  was  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  in  the  policies 
of  Washington  and  Jefferson  and  Marshall  as  to  the  duties  and  as  to 
the  functions  of  our  country  among  the  nations  of  the  world;  and  it  is 
little  less  than  sacrilege  for  anyone  to  say  that  Lincoln  would  have 
advocated  entry  of  our  country  into  the  League  of  Nations  and  thus 
become  subordinated  and  lost  in  the  Babel  of  voices  and  vortex  of 
selfish  passions  which  dominate  and  rule  that  incongruous  institution. 
Lincoln  knew  well  what  the  Christian  statesmen  of  England  were  at- 
tempting to  do  with  the  help  of  the  diplomats  of  France  and  the  other 
countries  on  the  Continent.  Gladstone  and  Palmerston  and  Russell  and 
the  vast  majority  of  the  English  and  French  intelligencia  were  ready 
to  gloat  over  the  destruction  of  the  Union,  and  came  within  a  hair's 
breadth  of  realizing  their  ardent  hopes  and  ambitions.  For  anyone  to 
say  that  Father  Abraham  would  have  consented  to  have  his  country, 
his  United  States,  have  one  voice  among  fifty-two  others,  one  voice 
against  fifty-two  others  in  a  league  which  is  represented  by  an  over- 
whelming majority  of  peoples — primitive,  selfish,  under-educated  and 
unprincipled  and  unscrupulous  in  their  diplomacy — for  any  man  to 
imagine  that  Abraham  Lincoln  would  have  ever  exposed  the  country  for 
which  he  fought  and  died  to  the  ipse  dixit  of  an  institution  of  this  kind, 
sprung  into  being  in  the  last  moments  of  the  expiring  Versailles  Confer- 
ence which  met  in  a  spirit  of  revenge,  which  acted  in  the  spirit  of  a 
conqueror  over  the  vanquished,  which  tried  to  extract  from  a  conquered 
foe  the  penalties  of  wars  and  of  differences  of  centuries,  has  not  read 
and  has  not  understood  the  words  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Abraham  Lincoln, 
with  his  immeasurable  sympathy,  never  believed  in  the  principle  of  voi 
victis — woe  to  the  conquered — and  it  was  from  that  atmosphere  that  the 
League  of  Nations  sprang.  That  alone  would  have  made  it  impossible 
for  a  man  of  the  mighty  toleration,  of  the  great  love,  of  the  great  heart 
of  Abraham  Lincoln,  to  participate  in  any  such  conference  or  become  a 
member  of  the  offspring  of  such  a  conference. 

11 


To  anyone  who  has  read  his  letters  and  his  addresses  on  recon- 
struction of  the  conquered  South,  to  anyone  who  knows  that  he  had 
nothing  but  the  hand  of  fellowship  for  Lee,  for  Jefferson  Davis,  for 
Benjamin  and  for  Johnson,  if  they  but  subscribed  to  the  oath  of  fealty, 
it  is  unthinkable  to  believe  that  Lincoln  would  have  become  a  partner 
in  the  bloody  military  cabals  of  the  Balkan  States  and  their  European  co- 
conspirators among  the  greater  powers  who  control  them. 

If  Lincoln  were  alive  today  and  in  a  position  of  power,  he  would 
prevent  the  contamination  of  the  United  States  by  union  with  people 
who  thrive  on  war,  who  believe  in  war,  who  prepare  for  war,  who  pray 
for  war  and  whose  business  is  war.  "Let  us  beware  of  military  glory," 
said  Lincoln.  "It  is  a  rainbow  made  of  drops  of  blood.  Like  the 
fascination  of  the  serpent,  it  charms  only  to  destroy.'*  He  would  not 
have  permitted  the  Union  of  his  country  with  people  who  do  not  believe 
in  religious  toleration  and  in  the  equality  of  man,  Lincoln,  this  bewilder- 
ingly  original  genius,  had  a  peculiar  method  of  minding  his  own  affairs 
and  of  having  the  United  States  mind  its  own  affairs;  he  would  have 
actually  advocated  the  principle  of  educating  America  first  and  enlighten- 
ing America  first,  of  saving  America  first,  and  of  making  the  people  of 
America  respected  by  being  tolerant  to  the  stranger  in  their  midst,  before 
he  would  move  to  participate  in  the  business  of  any  other  country  or 
any  other  nation.  He  would  have  been  adamant  on  the  question  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  would  not  have  thrown  it  into  the  ever-boiling 
cauldron  of  European  politics.  This  statesman  of  the  masses  would  have 
been  a  mighty  helper  in  the  struggle  between  capital  and  labor ;  he  would 
have  been  a  tower  of  strength  for  the  oppressed  of  every  nationality. 
He  would  have  laughed  out  of  existence  secret  organizations  as  inimical 
to  our  form  of  government,  and  would  have  led  them  all  into  the  temple 
of  the  Union  where  all  are  equal,  where  all  have  equal  opportunity,  and 
he  would  have  pointed  to  himself  as  he  often  did  when  he  said :  "I  happen 
temporarily  to  occupy  the  White  House.  I  am  a  living  witness  that  any 
one  of  your  children  may  look  to  come  here  as  my  father's  child  has." — 
and  it  might  have  been  his  life's  work  had  he  been  spared  from  the  bullet 
of  the  assassin  to  give  every  child  of  this  broad  land  just  that  opportunity. 
He  would  not  have  made  a  mockery  of  the  majesty  of  the  law  by  enforc- 
ing one  law  and  neglecting  others.  He  would  have  continued  to  act  with 
malice  towards  none  and  charity  to  all.  Justice,  justice  shalt  thou  pursue 
— would  have  been  Lincoln's  policy.  Not  one-sided  justice — not  justice 
directed  at  one  single  commandment — enforce  all  the  laws  impartially 
and  do  not  prefer  one  to  the  other — for  you  would  then  be  partial  to  one 
class  of  criminal,  more  lenient  with  one  than  with  the  other — a  policy 
which  ultimately  leads  to  injustice.  Practice  justice  for  the  sake  of 
justice,  and  not  because  of  popular  acclaim — "Let  us  have  faith  that  right 
makes  might  and  in  that  faith  let  us  to  the  end  dare  to  do  our  duty  as 
we  understand  it." 

12 


If  Lincoln  were  here  today  he  would  not  require  the  consent  of  an 
ecumenical   conference   to  give   him   permission   to   criticize  an   unfair 
law,  or  a  law  unfairly  enacted.    He  did  not  hesitate  to  criticize  the  Dred 
Scott  decision  in  the  most  rigorous  way — he  went  further;  he  charged 
an  understanding  between  the   dramatic  personae,   in  no   unmistakable 
manner — see  how  he  flays  Taney  and  Douglas,  Pierce  and  Buchanan. 
"We  cannot  absolutely  know  that  these  exact  adaptations  are  the  result 
of  pre-concert,  but  when  we  see  a  lot  of  framed  timbers,  different  por- 
tions of  which  we  know  have  been  gotten  out  at  different  times  and 
places,  and  by  different  workmen — Stephen,  Franklin,  Roger  and  James, 
for  instance;  and  when  we  see  these  timbers  joined  together,  and  see 
they  exactly  make  the  frame  of  a  house  or  a  mill,  all  the  tenons  and 
mortices  exactly  fitting,  and  all  the  lengths  and  proportions  of  the  dif- 
ferent pieces  exactly  adapted  to  their  respective  places,  and  not  a  piece 
too  many  or  too  few, — not  omitting  even  the  scaffolding — or  if  a  single 
piece  be  lacking,  we  see  the  place  in  the  frame  exactly  fitted  and  pre- 
pared to  yet  bring  such  pieces  in — in  such  a  case  we  feel  it  impossible 
not  to  believe  that  Stephen  and  Franklin,  and  Roger  and  James,  all 
understood  one  another  from  the  beginning,  and  all  worked  upon  a  com- 
mon plan  or  draft  drawn  before  the  first  blow  was  struck."    If  for  no 
other  reason,  his  presence  in  these  days  would  have  been  a  disp>ensation, 
for  he  would  have  demonstrated  the  fallacy  which  has  become  a  great 
shibboleth  of  good  citizenship — that  a  bad  law,  known  to  be  bad,  must 
be  enforced  ad  nauseam  in  order  to  educate  a  community  for  its  repeal. 
He  did  not  belong  to  the  class  who  said :  "My  country,  right  or  wrong — 
nevertheless  my  country."     He  said :  "My  country  must  ever  be  right, 
and  when  wrong  must  acknowledge  that  it  is  wrong  and  must  be  set 
right." — as  he  did  with  the  Trent  Affair,  when  the  entire  North  fairly 
howled  approval  of  the  Captain's  conduct  when  he  seized  the  Southern 
commissioners.     We  cannot  imagine  Lincoln  standing  by  and  knowing 
that  an  idea  or  an  enactment  or  a  bill  or  a  law  was  wrong — and  stand 
idly  by  and  be  cowed  into  worshipping  that  law.     And  yet  no  human 
being  ever  breathed  who  had  a  greater  respect  for  law.     We  all  know 
his  stand  on  immigration,  how  he  had  not  the  heart  to  do  aught  which 
would  prevent  anyone,  who  fled  from  persecution  or  who  came  here  to 
better  his  lot,  from  coming  here.    He  knew  nothing  of  Nordic  or  South 
European — all  he  knew  was  that  one  God  made  us  all.     Now,  some  of 
us  have  discovered  what  he  said,  and  how   farseeing  his  immigration 
policy  was  may  be  seen  from  the  united  North  which  fought  the  Civil 
War  and  then  the  Great  War  in  our  own  day — the  roar  of  cannon  knows 
no  distinction  between  Hollander,  English,  French  or  German  descen- 
dants of  our  early  immigrants !    Some  of  us  still  recall  the  inspired  war 
cartoon  showing  the  fusion  of  all  nationalities  in  the  defense  of  our 
country — ^the  young  men  with  those  unpronounceable  names  who  fought 

13 


so  nobly  and  so  well.  Would  he  look  with  favor  upon  an  alien  registra- 
tion law?  He  certainly  would  not;  he  would  write  another  letter  to 
Speed,  which  would  read  as  follows : 

.  Our  progress  in  degeneracy  appears  to  be  pretty  rapid. 
As  a  Nation  we  began  by  declaring  that  'AH  men  are  created  free  and 
equal.'  We  now  practically  read  it:  'AH  men  are  created  equal,  except 
negroes.'  When  Know-nothings  get  control — 'All  men  are  created  equal 
except  negroes,  foreigners  and  Catholics!'  When  it  comes  to  this,  I 
shall  prefer  emigrating  to  some  country  where  they  make  no  pretence 
of  loving  liberty — to  Russia,  for  instance,  where  despotism  can  be  taken 
pure,  and  without  even  the  base  alloy  of  hypocrisy." 

He  would  have  stamped  out  religious  persecution  in  every  shape  as 
he  stamped  out  sedition  and  secession.  He  pleaded  for  peaceful  solution 
of  the  overwhelming  problem  which  confronted  him — and  Lincoln's  diffi- 
culties at  that  time  have  never  been  adequately  portrayed — and  when  that 
failed,  and  when  the  blind  Southern  leaders,  bent  on  secession,  became 
the  aggressors,  he  firmly  and  unflaggingly  saw  the  War  to  a  successful 
end.  Nor  was  he  diverted  from  his  purpose  by  other  entanglements. 
"One  war  at  a  time,"  was  his  slogan;  but  he  was  prepared  for  the  next 
problem  the  moment  the  War  was  over.  He  would  have  ended  the 
cowardly  attack  of  sects  levelled  against  their  neighbors  simply  because 
of  religious  differences  or  because  of  the  differences  in  time  of  their 
arrival  on  these  shores.  He  would  have  spoken  directly  and  clearly  as 
he  did  when  he  delivered  his  ''House  divided"  speech  in  spite  of  the 
advice  of  his  entire  party  of  advisors  and  managers  who  wailed  that 
defeat  was  certain  should  he  utter  those  fatal  words — which  he  did  utter 
— and  which  were  heard  by  an  aroused  people  from  coast  to  coast.  His 
living  words  about  our  attitude  towards  negroes  and  Catholics  just 
quoted  are  ample  proof  of  this  claim  as  to  what  he  would  have  done  were 
he  in  office  today  on  the  underlying  problem  of  toleration. 

He  would  have  been  for  arbitration,  universal  in  its  application ;  not 
arbitration  with  loaded  dice;  arbitration  such  as  would  insure  not  only 
all  people  of  the  earth  an  honest  verdict,  but  which  would  protect  the 
United  States  from  envious  and  rapacious  claims  and  plots  and  schemes 
of  the  war-impoverished  peoples  of  the  world,  whose  sole  aim  in  life 
seems  to  be  the  unloading  of  all  the  troubles  of  the  world  upon  our  heads. 
He  would  have  seen  that ;  he  would  have  understood  that ;  and  he,  with 
his  amazing  personality  would  have  accomplished  what  seems  to  be  so 
hard  for  us  to  understand  and  cope  with. 

He  would  not  have  permitted  the  Civil  Service  to  become  the  Frank- 
enstein which  it  has  become.  "Appoint  that  man  Colonel  of  the  regiment 
regardless   of   whether  he   knows   the  color  of   Caesar's   hair." — is   so 

14 


eloquent  a  commentary  as  to  what  he  would  have  done  with  the  entire 
breed  of  the  reformers  of  our  service — who  have  reformed  and  improved 
it  to  such  a  point  that  they  have  driven  out  of  political  life  every  up- 
standing and  unbendable  mind,  so  many  of  whom  we  met  in  office  in 
Lincoln's  day.  He  would  not  have  tolerated  in  our  service  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  principle  based  upon  the  legend  of  the  visitor's  bed  in  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah — a.  bed  of  one  given  size — prepared  for  the  unfortunate 
guest  who  would  sojourn  in  those  then  up-to-date  municipalities.  The 
Civil  Service  cuts  off  his  legs  if  he  is  too  long  or  stretches  his  limbs  if 
he  is  too  short.  He  must  fit  in  this  Civil  Service  bed  of  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah ;  for  the  Civil  Service  man  has  measured  the  bed  and  the  berth 
and  there  is  the  end.  Lincoln  would  never  have  subscribed  to  such  a 
theory.  "See  and  speak  to  this  man." — read  many  of  his  comments  on 
petitions  for  all  manner  of  requests  to  the  government.  Nowadays  we 
don't  see  and  we  don't  speak  to  anyone — the  examination  paper  as  marked 
and  appraised  by  an  omniscient  examiner  in  the  absence  of  the  victim,  is 
decisive  and  final  and  unappealable. 

Foreign  debts?  Did  we  pay  our  debts  of  1776  to  France  and  to 
the  others?  Bring  forth  the  records — Lincoln  never  would  have  heeded 
such  much  prayed  for  international  disavowal  of  debts ;  Lincoln  himself 
paid  every  dollar  of  the  debts  incurred  by  his  drunken  partner,  although 
it  took  him  twelve  years  to  do  it.  Such  anxious  and  premeditated  volun- 
tary bankruptcies  of  debtors  for  loans  which  were  borrowed  in  the  name 
of  liberty  and  for  the  purpose  of  achieving  freedom  from  the  oppressor 
and  which  were  promised  to  be  repaid  with  great  solemnity  by  these 
countries  with  interest  and  with  gratitude.  So-called  gratitude  we  get,  but 
neither  principle  nor  interest  seems  to  be  forthcoming  from  any  of  them, 
excepting  from  England.  But  all  of  them  are  even  now  trying  to  bring 
us  into  their  League  in  order  not  only  not  to  pay  what  is  due  to  us,  but 
use  us  as  the  general  messenger  and  the  general  utility  man,  as  their 
overwhelming  majority  therein  might  direct. 

We  can  sum  up  Lincoln's  attitude  on  all  these  questions  by  a  single 
quotation — a  complete  philosophy  of  life — his  chief  concern  in  life: 

"A  struggle  for  maintaining  in  the  world  that  form  and  substance 
of  government  whose  leading  object  is  to  elevate  the  condition  of  men, 
to  lift  artificial  weights  from  all  shoulders,  to  clear  the  paths  of  laudable 
pursuits  for  all,  to  afford  all  an  unfettered  start  and  a  fair  chance  in  the 
race  of  life." 

And  to  those  who  are  discontent  with  limiting  the  sphere  of  action 
of  our  great  Emancipator  and  are  bound  to  make  him  a  citizen  of  the 
world,  I  have  but  to  say  that  his  resplendent  example  alone  will  suffice 
for  those  other  nations  of  the  world  who  would  have  some  of  his  glory 

15 


and  who  would  have  a  share  in  his  great  heritage  which  he  left  to  all 
the  children  of  men  and  as  of  the  great  Jewish  lawgiver  of  old,  we  can 
say  of  Jiim: 

"     .      .      .     he  is  more  than  ours  as  we  are  more 

Than  yet  the  world  dares  dream.     His  stature  grows 

With  that  illimitable  state 

Whose  sovereignty  ordains  no  tribute  shore, 

And  borderland  of  hate. 

But  grounds  its  justice  in  the  joy  it  sows. 

His  spirit  is  still  a  power  to  emancipate 

Bondage — more  base,  being  more  insidious, 

Than  serfdom — that  cries  out  in  the  midst  of  us 

For  virtue,  born  of  opportunity. 

And  manhood,  weighed  in  honest  human  worth. 

And  freedom,  best  in  labor.     He  stands  forth 

*Mongst  nations  old — a  new-world  Abraham, 

The  patriarch  of  peoples  still  to  be     .      .      ." 


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3  0112  031819631 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 

973.7L63GH44M  C002 

THE  MANY-SIDED  LINCOLN  NY 


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